What the hell?

I just had a guy my last game rush me with 40-50 scout vessels (and fail).  What the hell is all that about?  Are we starting to recruite insane retard schizophrenics into the sins online gaming pool or what?  ...or was that supposed to actually somehow work ? didn't for him.

8,432 views 11 replies
Reply #1 Top

What was the situation? Was this an early-game attack or later on? Scout rushes can be extremely effective at disrupting the enemy's economy by shooting down construction ships, and for the TEC, Timed Explosives make them one of the cheapest ways to wipe out Repair bays and various structures.

Of course, scout attacks aren't too common, so your opponent might have been trying to well, use a shock value attack. It would be rather demoralizing to lose a fleet of assault ships to a bunch of scouts. ^_^

Reply #2 Top

Hahahahaha thats funny...never had a scout fleet attack me b4...must have been quite surprising to have 40-50 scout ships come out of phase to attack you...lol i would have liked to have seen that...but yeah the Timed Explosives can be quite devastating on structures...especially on Trade Ports and other such structures...

Reply #3 Top

Quoting Swordsalmon, reply 1
What was the situation? Was this an early-game attack or later on? Scout rushes can be extremely effective at disrupting the enemy's economy by shooting down construction ships, and for the TEC, Timed Explosives make them one of the cheapest ways to wipe out Repair bays and various structures.

Of course, scout attacks aren't too common, so your opponent might have been trying to well, use a shock value attack. It would be rather demoralizing to lose a fleet of assault ships to a bunch of scouts.
End of Swordsalmon's quote

 

I got my second cap ship out and had researched and built carriers.  So bridget from early to mid game more or less.  Maybe he was paranoid about scouting lol.  REALLY needed to see what I was doing hah.  Whatever,  made my day really...my bombers and cap ship picked them off.

Reply #4 Top

Quoting General_Ethan153, reply 2
Hahahahaha thats funny...never had a scout fleet attack me b4...must have been quite surprising to have 40-50 scout ships come out of phase to attack you...lol i would have liked to have seen that...but yeah the Timed Explosives can be quite devastating on structures...especially on Trade Ports and other such structures...
End of General_Ethan153's quote

 

It looked like there was little of them until I looked at the numbers on the top left screen thingy.  They group together really close.  People will try anything I guess.  What next?  Colony frigate rush?

Reply #5 Top

I just had a guy my last game rush me with 40-50 scout vessels (and fail). What the hell is all that about?
End of quote

The thing is the more the battle progresses on the more the ships get used to the damage, the shield migration thing.

But if you have alot of ships consentrating on one enemy you can take it out realy fast.

a good set up.

Scout average damage=3-4 x 500 scouts = 1500-2000 damage thats pretty good.

Your battle set up.

Scout average damage 3-4 x 50 scouts = 150-200 thats still good.the key is to make sure there focusing fire.

Reply #6 Top

Quoting love9sick, reply 4



Quoting General_Ethan153,
reply 2
Hahahahaha thats funny...never had a scout fleet attack me b4...must have been quite surprising to have 40-50 scout ships come out of phase to attack you...lol i would have liked to have seen that...but yeah the Timed Explosives can be quite devastating on structures...especially on Trade Ports and other such structures...


 

It looked like there was little of them until I looked at the numbers on the top left screen thingy.  They group together really close.  People will try anything I guess.  What next?  Colony frigate rush?
End of love9sick's quote

Hahaha!! A colony frigate rush! thats funny...and it would have as much success as the scout fleet... well guys...i have a major problem...and i was hoping you guys could help me out...i downloaded the update for SOASE from Impulse, but now i cant even play the game vs the AIs!! what do you guys think is happening?

Reply #7 Top

lol i know this is kinda off topic...but i couldnt help but notice...is your picture House?

 

lol ok we can get back to talking about the topic on hand...

Reply #8 Top

Yes it is house photoshopped as Gordon Freeman.  The likeness is amazing.

Reply #10 Top

ive actually seen people who only build scouts as a fleet.

i once had a guy on my team who did it, and it actually worked. he had 2 fleets of 175 scouts and 30 flack (he was advent) and he was taking down SBs with 6k hp.  mind you every single ship in the game counters scouts except lrfs so i still think it was a bad stratagy. i was just lucky that the guy mr. scout fleet was attacking was continually spamming lrms

 

Reply #11 Top

The only way I could see it work is that scouts are cheap, have low  and don't require research.  They also build fast.  I suppose you could try to overwhelm someone with scouts if you did it quicky... take out constructors and then focus fire on individual ships.  If the opponent gets a fleet you're in trouble though.  Likewise if they start building defenses.  You'd still need your cap to take out theirs of course.

 

Here are some numbers for advent (https://www.sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Types):

 

               Scout                 LF                  LRF

Scout      200%/6dps   25%/.75dps     200%/6dps

LF          75%/6ps       100%/8dps      75%/6dps

LRF        100%/18dps  150%/27dps    100%/18dps

 

The dps shown is base dps (not shown) multiplied by the damage percent, which is shown.  So on a pure dps basis, the scout fails miserably to the LF (.75dps compared to 6dps), but you only need 3 scouts deal as much damage to an LRF as that LRF is able to deal back to your scouts.

 

Looking at armor, the scouts have exactly the same armor as the LFs, except they have light armor compared to the medium armor on the LFs.  Since we already took armor type into account, we now look at the numbers (ignoring shield mitigation.. someone else want to work that?): 

 

                 Hull             Shields               Cost (converted, 500 credits per 100 resources)

Scout         400               425                  200

LF             400               425                   250

LRF           620               550                   955

 

Using the value "cost/DPS" we see that the scout by default costs 66.67credits/dps (200credits/3dps).  Vs the LF it costs 266.67, and vs the LRF it costs 33.33.  The LF costs 41.67 vs the scout, 31.25 vs other LFs, and 41.67 vs the LRF.  The LRF costs 53.055 vs the scout, 35.37 vs the LF, and 53.05 vs other LRFs. 

 

From these raw numbers we see certain truths: The scout is horribly ineffective for fighting LFs, but on a pure cost/DPS basis it is better against LRFs than LRFs are against LFs.  That is to say, put the same amount of money into scouts and into LRFs, and your scouts will be doing more dps against a group of LRFs than your group of LRFs would be doing against LFs (which is their favored enemy). Also, oddly, it seems as though the LF is more cost effective than LRFs against other LFs, ignoring armor.

 

Now we take armor into account.  Ignoring mitigation it would take 137.5 seconds for an LF to kill a scout at 6dps/second.  It would take 8 scouts to kill a single LF in the same period of time.  If you can have an advantage of 8 scouts to 1 LF then you can replace your scouts cheaper than your opponent can replace his LFs.  Its ok if a second scout takes damage though, so if you can micro your scouts, you can kill 1 LF with 5 scouts and only lose 1 (226.67 seconds to kill the LF, compared to 275 seconds necessary for the LF to kill 2 scouts).  Thus, a 5 to 1 advantage with appropriate microing could be enough to beat an opponent with LFs.  Fleet supply does not allow for this advantage, and neither does the build time for each ship (14s for the scout, 20s for the LF).

 

Next up, the scout vs the LRF is a different animal entirely.  The scout is better in cost/dps terms than the LRF is, but this doesn't account for armor.  It would take 1 scout 195 seconds to kill one LRF (again ignoring mitigation).  The LRF kills a scout in 47.22 seconds (if the avent LRF could bring all guns to bear on one scout).  5 scouts will kill an LRF before the LRF kills any scouts.  If you can micro the scouts and prevent the LRF from using more than 1 of its 3 guns, 2 scouts can kill an LRF without loss.  This is a cost difference of between 1000 (5 scouts) or 400 (2 scouts) vs 955 for the LRF.  With a 5 to 1 ratio, the scouts barely cost more than the LRFs.  WIth a 2 to 1 ratio, the scouts are clearly more cost effective.  Also, the LF takes 26 seconds to build, nearly double the time it takes to build a scout.  It also takes some considerable money put into planet upgrades, temples, and research.

 

All this suggests few (if any) effective scout strategies:  Scouts in the very early game can destroy constructors, but an opponent will build LFs to counter.  Scouts in the early-mid game could be effective in numbers, if you can get your opponent to build LRFs exclusively.  Unfortunately fighters counter scouts as easily as they counter LRFs.  You only have safety in numbers (4250 armor for 5 scouts vs 1170 for 1 LRF).  So basically, build the LF rush described in the other thread to get your opponent to build LRFs, then counter with at least double the number of scouts.  This should be possible since you haven't spent any money at all on ship research.  Of course you still have to contend with the enemy cap and with any structures the enemy has already built.  If you kill his constructors with this rush though, you more or less have free reign over his planets, as long as he doesn't start building LFs or carriers to counter your scouts immediately when you attack to kill his LRFs..Since you don't need ship research for this, one temple of hostility is enough to research the fleet upgrade.  After that you can focus on building your fleet and quickly.